Sheep & Goats

Sire variation in dry matter intake: the potential for selection to refine intake traits

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Abstract

Between-animal variation in dry matter intake (DMI) provides an opportunity to improve productivity and environmental sustainability while reducing feed costs. Large scale measurements of DMI are challenging in small ruminants where the indoor housing period is limited. An initial focus on sire variation in progeny DMI offers a useful first step to assess the value of generating a large-scale individual animal DMI dataset. The objective of this study was to quantify the variation in DMI among sires of nulliparous ewe lambs and to investigate feeding behaviour around visit frequency. Dry matter intake was measured on a total of 85 nulliparous Texel and Suffolk ewe lambs (c 7 to 11 months of age) from 29 sires. Dry matter intake was recorded using the BioControl automated feeding system across two time periods. In each period, forty-two lambs were allocated to three groups balanced for live weight and breed, with each group having access to four automated feed bins. Following a 14-day adaption period, DMI was measured for 70 days in dataset one and 49 days in dataset two. Animals were offered a grass silage diet ad-libitum and live weight was monitored every two weeks. For data cleaning, the feeding rate per feed event was calculated as an animal's intake divided by the feed duration, following the removal of outliers; 4,931 individual DMI records were available for analysis. A linear mixed model was used to investigate the effect of sire on DMI (kg DM/day) and daily feed visits, fixed effects included breed and measurement group and period, initial live weight of the animal included as a covariate, sire included as a random effect and animal included as a repeated effect. Dry matter intake differed by breed (P< 0.05) with Texel sired lambs, on average, consuming 0.14 kg DM/day more than Suffolk sired lambs (P< 0.05). Dry matter intake varied by sire (P< 0.05) and ranged from 0.40 to 1.23 kg DM/day per sire. A moderate positive correlation was observed between the number of daily feed visits and DMI, with progeny of sires with higher DMI, on average, visiting the system more often (P< 0.05). In the raw data, progeny from Sire 24 were the first to access feed on 30% of occasions in period one while progeny from Sire 7 were first to consume feed on 30% of occasions in period two. Results from this study highlight the significant sire variation in DMI, this coupled with differences in feeding behaviour suggest that there is a genetic component influencing DMI. These findings indicate the usefulness of generating large-scale individual animal DMI datasets to further quantify the genetic influence on DMI before implementing selection strategies.

Keywords: 2026

How to Cite:

O’Connor, E., McGovern, F., Dunne, E., Monahan, C. & McHugh, N., (2026) “Sire variation in dry matter intake: the potential for selection to refine intake traits”, World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production Digital Archive 2026(1): 2284567. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.23594

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